She twists her lips. ‘We’ll need something a little fresher for dinner.’
He laughs, turns the bone against the pale spring light. ‘You might be right.’
She puts her arm around him. ‘Remember eating? I’d like you to do that. This extra gaunt look isn’t doing it for me.’
Shroudweaver tries to strike a pose, slips. She catches him with both an arm and a meaningful look.
He steadies himself against her. ‘OK, point taken. I think we only have a night or two before we reach Thell anyway. I’d rather not do that on an empty stomach.’
‘Good,’ she kisses his cheek. ‘Although, we might not want to look too appetising.’
He groans. ‘Please keep that to yourself when we arrive.’
She laughs. ‘Isn’t that why you keep me around? Shit jokes and great sex?’
‘No, it’s because you have load-bearing shoulders and you can tell port from starboard.’
He looks around from the top of the outcrop. The black spike of the Burners’ woods to the east, the Barrowlands before them, the Midlands behind and Thell on the horizon like a hangover. ‘Not that that’s much use out here.’
Shipwright nods, wriggles her pack onto her shoulders, stamps her boots. ‘It’s the worry, isn’t it? It’s literally eating you.’
Shroudweaver turns his shoulders against the horizon. ‘It’s not that bad. I’m just fretting about what we’ll find. About what we’re risking. What I’m risking.’
She raises a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Not that bad? I can see the light through you. You need rest. Some food that isn’t a herb. Something with fat and life in it.’
He turns, steps gingerly down the slope towards her. ‘You’re right. I’m hard work just now. Don’t think I don’t know. But unbinding the dead could destroy so much. Everyone in Thell. Everyone outside. You, me …’
He trails off.
‘Crowkisser,’ she finishes.
He nods.
She strokes the sides of his face. The rough grey hairs that have grown in over the past few weeks. His skin is looser, sallow from lack sleep and his eyes are like smudged pits.
‘We could save a lot of lives too. If we stall her at Thell, we can finally stop jumping at our shadows. We can come up with some plans instead of chasing down every move she makes.’
He nods, shivers.
‘I just—’ he shrugs, rolling his shoulders awkwardly. ‘It’s all on me. I’m the only one that can do this. If I don’t do it right …’
She kisses his forehead gently. ‘You’ll do it right.’
He leans into her lips. ‘If I don’t.’ Stops, clears the tremor in his throat. ‘If I don’t, you’ll have to deal with me.’
She bites down on the flutter of fear that comes in response to that. ‘I deal with you every day.’
He smiles. Even now, she can make him smile. A little victory.
Taking her hands in his, he runs his fingers over her knuckles. ‘You know there’ll be a composite. Like the god in Hesper. But bigger, much bigger. And loose.’
She grips him tighter, feels the old burns from powder, rope and thread. Scars of the trade. ‘Loose? I thought …’
‘That they needed to be inside someone?’ He shakes his head softly, shivers again. ‘We were always taught that, it was Aestering law, almost. You never bind, you never create outside of blood and bone. So they said.’ He tucks into the crook of her arm, and she pulls her cloak over his shoulders to keep off the worst of the wind.
‘They? The teachers at the Aestering?’
He nods. ‘The other weavers. The older weavers.’
